A critical moment for the future of our country

At 11:16 this morning, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California and the man responsible for the fourth-largest economy in the world, released a statement standing at a podium with American flags on one side of him and the California state flag on the other. During the 4-minute and 42-second video, he was direct and controlled, yet still struggled to contain his anger because the message he was delivering should never have to be said in the United States of America, especially not by a governor elected to serve the people of his state. He was seething. And the warning he delivered was not just for California. It was a warning for all of us, and one we need to hear before it is too late.

What Newsom stepped up to the camera to talk about was this. The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into him and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. He did not soften it or dress it up. He said that in recent days federal agents have knocked on the doors of family, friends, and former employees. And then he said the sentence that explains everything that comes after it: “They have not found a crime, they are simply trying to find one.”

That is what is so dangerous about what is happening. A normal investigation begins with a crime and goes looking for the person who committed it. This one began with the person and went looking for a crime to hang on him. This is the Trump administration picking the target first and the charge second. This is not enforcing the law. It is using it. This is Donald Trump weaponizing the Department of Justice to punish his enemies and to send a message to every single person in this country: if you resist Trump’s authoritarian takeover, we will come for you and make your life as difficult as we can. We may even try to arrest you.

Trump’s administration would like us to believe this is not what it looks like. It will point out that questions about Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit did not start this week. And that is true. The investigation reportedly began more than a year ago. But that is exactly why this story matters. Donald Trump did not need to invent an allegation. He didn’t need to create a scandal from scratch. He just needed something sitting on a shelf that could be picked up when it became politically useful, or when he found someone willing to carry it forward. That’s what authoritarians do. They find an old complaint, an old investigation, or an old accusation, and suddenly it becomes urgent the moment the target becomes useful.

Because if this were really about Jennifer Siebel Newsom, we probably wouldn’t be talking about it tonight. Gavin Newsom made that point himself. He said this is not about his wife. It is not about taxes or about paperwork. It is about him. It is about the governor of the nation’s largest blue state, a man Donald Trump has been publicly feuding with for years and a man many believe could run for president in 2028.

And when Newsom stood in front of those cameras and accused the President of the United States of using the Justice Department to target his family, the Department of Justice had an opportunity to explain itself. It could have reassured the public or answered questions. It could have explained why federal agents were now showing up at the homes of friends, former staff members, and people connected to the governor. Instead, according to NBC News, the Department of Justice declined to comment.

That silence tells its own story. Because when someone says you are doing something this serious, and it isn’t true, most people don’t stay quiet. They say so. They deny it. They explain it. They push back. The Department of Justice did none of those things. It simply declined to comment because they are doing exactly what we are being warned about.

This is the same administration that never runs out of words for Gavin Newsom. The president calls him “NewScum.” He rants about Newsom being the leader of a failing state. He posts about him in the middle of the night, for hours, in all capitals. Trump is obsessed with Gavin Newsom. And that tells us exactly what this is really about. Newsom is just the latest to be added to the top of Trump’s enemies list. He knows that Newsom won’t bow down to him. And that makes him a target because Trump cannot have anyone standing in his way ahead of the midterms or when it comes to completing his authoritarian takeover.

And then there is the sickest part. Who they went through to send this threat to Newsom. His wife. Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Jennifer, a documentary filmmaker and an advocate who has spent her career on issues affecting women and girls, is also the mother of four children. And she is the one with federal agents asking questions about her taxes, her nonprofit, and the people in her life. Because that is how you break a person who will not break on his own. You do not go after the man who dares you to come at him. You go after the people he loves, and you make him watch. Newsom said it himself, and it is the most important thing he said all day: “You can subpoena my records, you can investigate me. You can harass me, put my name on every and any enemies list you have. But leave my wife and family out of your personal vendetta.”

They will not leave her out of it, because she is the leverage. It does not matter to them whether there is a crime. It does not matter whether anything is ever officially filed. The investigation itself is the punishment. If they wanted to put pressure on Gavin Newsom, they know exactly where to apply it. They know that going after a spouse hurts in a way that could make some people walk away. And that is what should concern all of us. Because this is not really about whether charges are ever filed. It is not even about whether anyone did anything wrong. The investigation itself does the work. Federal agents show up at your friends’ homes. People start getting calls. Lawyers get involved. The headlines start spreading. Your family has to live with the stress of not knowing what comes next. That is the point.

And he is not the first. He is just the latest. The names keep changing, but the pattern stays the same. James Comey. Letitia James. Adam Schiff. Mark Kelly. Elissa Slotkin. John Brennan. Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve. Jerome Powell. Tim Walz. And now Gavin Newsom and the mother of his children.

Then look at who gets protected. The January 6th rioters received blanket pardons on day one. Rudy Giuliani. Mark Meadows. Sidney Powell. Allies who helped try to overturn an election. People accused of breaking the law are rewarded with protection, while people who stand in Trump’s way find themselves under investigation.

And that is what all of this comes down to. One set of rules for Trump’s enemies, the people standing on the right side of history. Another set of rules for Trump’s allies, who care more about him than the country they claim to love.

The people this Justice Department investigates are the people who crossed Donald Trump. The people it rescues are the people who served him. And the dividing line is not party, no matter how badly they want us to believe it is, because John Bolton is a Republican and James Comey was a Republican until 2016 when he became an unaffiliated independent. The line is not left and right. The line is loyalty and disloyalty. That is the only thing that reliably predicts whether you get the grand jury or the pardon. Not what you did. Who you stood with.

But even Trump’s allies should pay attention. They are not safe either. Because eventually, he turns on everyone. He always has. He always will.

But this isn’t just about Newsom. You don’t have to like Gavin Newsom. You don’t have to agree with every decision he has made, and you don’t have to pretend he has never made mistakes. This is about none of that. This is about us. Every single one of us who is speaking out against everything Trump and his enablers are doing to our country. And this is about unchecked power.

Because if a president can use the Department of Justice to go after a sitting governor and his family, then the question is no longer what happens to Gavin Newsom. The question becomes: who is next? If they can do it to the governor of California, they can do it to a mayor. They can do it to a journalist. They can do it to a nonprofit director. They can do it to a business owner who refuses to fall in line. They can do it to a protest organizer. They can do it to anyone who becomes inconvenient.

And that is the part that we need to make sure as many people as possible understand. The danger is not just that Gavin Newsom gets investigated or that they are using his wife to punish and silence him. The danger is that we begin to accept a country where presidents investigate their political opponents and their families as a normal part of governing. Because once that line is crossed, there is no clear stopping point. There is always another enemy. There is always another critic. There is always another person who needs to be taught a lesson.

History is full of countries that convinced themselves it couldn’t happen there. That the institutions would hold. That someone would step in. That there would be a limit. And by the time they realized there wasn’t, it was too late.

That is why this matters. Not just because of Gavin Newsom. Because of us. Because every time power goes unchecked, it grows. And if we allow a government to use fear, investigations, and intimidation against its political opponents, eventually there won’t be anyone left willing to stand up to it at all. And before we know it we will all be on his enemies list.

The man they have chosen to run this investigation appears to be Todd Blanche. Blanch, the acting head of the Justice Department, was also Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney. He is the lawyer who stood beside him through the trial that ended in 34 felony convictions. He took over the department, and the investigations into the president’s enemies accelerated, with new investigations started and old ones ramped up. And it is just getting started. Just a week ago, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was on the ticket running against Trump in 2024, was referred to the DOJ for prosecution, and that same week, Trump announced that he would be formally nominating Blanche to keep the job for good. We have to ask ourselves what it takes to earn that kind of promotion. This is a man who, asked whether he wanted the position, answered by saying, “I love working for President Trump. It’s the greatest honor of a lifetime,” and added that if the president asked him to step aside, “I will say thank you very much, I love you, sir.” That is the person deciding whose door the agents knock on. A man who says I love you, sir to the president, running the department that is supposed to answer to the law and not to one man.

And we know this is not coming out of nowhere. Trump has been telling us what he wanted to do to Gavin Newsom for a long time. Last summer, when Newsom dared them to come and arrest him, Donald Trump was asked whether he supported it, and he said, “I would do it, if I were Tom,” referring to Tom Homan, the White House “Border Czar”. Then he added that the governor’s real crime was running for governor, since he had done such a bad job. He said it would be “a great thing.” At the time, people brushed it off as Trump just being Trump. But now that threat has a federal investigation attached to it, and his wife and their greater community have been dragged into it, too.

Trump has spent years attacking Newsom, mocking him, blaming him for everything he can, and treating him as one of his favorite political targets. Newsom, meanwhile, has been one of the few Democratic leaders willing to challenge him publicly, call out his corruption and abuses of power, and refuse to back down. Looking at what is happening now, it is hard to ignore where those two paths have led.

There is a lot of noise and drama in this administration. Trump does terrible things every day. None of that is okay. But to stay in this fight, we have to choose where we focus our energy. This is one of those moments. Because this is not just a story about Gavin Newsom or about a president using the Department of Justice against a political opponent. This is a story about what comes next and who it is coming for. That is why this matters. That is why we cannot shrug and move on. This is one of those moments when we have to stand up, speak out, and stop this before it grows into something even more dangerous.

Because here is what they are counting on us believing: that this could never happen to you or me. That the Newsoms are wealthy and connected and complicated, that they have nonprofits and lawyers and tax returns thick enough to hide things in, and that whatever is happening to them lives in a different world from us.

And some of that might be true, but this kind of rot doesn’t stop where it starts. They will come for each one of us. If we become a problem for the people in charge, they will make our lives miserable. They will investigate us. They will investigate the people around us. And they will drag our names through the headlines and force us to spend years defending ourselves. Because if they can do that to the governor of California, they can do it to anyone. That is the part we cannot lose sight of.

Many of us know this fear in ways we wish we did not. I think about this every night I sit down to write. I think about others in this space who are also putting everything on the line because they want a better country and a better world for themselves and those who come after us. Many of us think about our safety and security. We think about all the ways Trump and his enablers could harm us “within the law” and how much damage they could cause.

And we still keep speaking up because silence is more dangerous. Because we know that when you have a voice, you have to use it. That is what scares people like Trump. That is why journalists get targeted. Protesters get targeted. Governors get targeted. Writers get targeted. Everyday citizens get targeted for refusing to sit this out or look away even when it is more comfortable to do so.

That is why they are working so hard to make examples out of people. It is why they are ramping up their efforts. They want the rest of us to see what happens and decide that staying quiet is safer. We cannot let them succeed.

Even though so many of the cases Trump has made against his enemies were thrown out by federal judges, the arrests still happened. The bills and the fear still came. The years of a life still got spent defending against a charge a judge eventually said should never have been brought. They did not need to win. They never needed to win. They only needed us to know it could happen to us, so that the next time we sat down to speak, some quiet part of us would think about our family, and our job, and our records, and decide it was not worth it. The right to condemn the government without being punished for it is the foundation of the First Amendment, and that foundation is exactly what they are trying to crack, one investigation at a time, one family at a time, one rung at a time.

So what do we do. We keep resisting and we keep sharing the truth. It is that simple. The chilling effect only works if we let ourselves be chilled. So we refuse. We say the true thing out loud, and then we say it again tomorrow. We call our representatives and we tell them this is a line, that a Justice Department used as a personal weapon against the family of a political rival is not a policy disagreement, it is the end of the thing that makes us a country of laws, and we ask them what they intend to do about it. We pay attention to who stays silent, because the silence is an answer from them too. We carry all of it into the one place where they cannot redact us or dismiss our case or knock on our door to make us stop. The midterms are now less than five months of real work away from deciding whether any of this has a check on it at all.

We are going to take back this country. That is what we need to hold onto. I saw a sign of where things are headed in the most unlikely place last night. At Trump’s birthday cage fight, a fighter took the microphone after his win and aimed a cruel, dehumanizing comment at Michelle Obama, the former First Lady, who has given this country nothing but her service. The crowd laughed. The president, seated in the front row, gave what CNN described as a half-smile and said nothing. But that wasn’t the end of it. The pushback came, and it came from many of Trump’s own loyalists. Dana White, the president’s own friend, who runs the UFC, condemned his own fighter, saying: “I understand that the Obamas are public figures, but I’m completely against saying nasty and false things about people’s families. Everyone knows my position on free speech, but I hate that kind of nonsense.” Dave Portnoy told his audience, “I don’t care what you think about the Obamas or anything. That has to be an immediate denounce.” And David Marcus, a Fox News columnist, wrote on X: “The fighter yelling ‘Michelle Obama is a man,’ at an official White House event to honor America is utterly unacceptable and the administration should [denounce] it in no uncertain terms.” The line still exists. Even there on that lawn, on that night, enough people from across the divide looked at that and said it was beneath us. That instinct is not dead. And we can make sure it never is. They are trying to make us afraid to use our voices. The answer, the only answer that has ever worked, is to use them louder, together, until the fear belongs to them and not to us. And I know that is something we can and will do. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: My parents came for a visit this weekend and brought oranges, rosemary, and thyme from their garden. I am thankful tonight, not just for the gifts, but for what they represent: family who were able to see what Trump was doing to this country years ago, and who have been on the right side of history ever since.

Sources:

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/06/15/governor-gavin-newsom-statement-on-donald-trumps-weaponized-doj-investigation/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gavin-newsom-justice-department-investigation/
https://abcnews.com/Politics/gavin-newsom-department-justice-investigating-wife/story?id=133899236
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/08/politics/todd-blanche-trump-attorney-general-nomination
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/09/nx-s1-5850426/trump-formally-nominates-todd-blanche-to-serve-as-attorney-general
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/minnesota-gov-tim-walz-says-dropping-re-election-bid-rcna252300
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/24/politics/james-comey-letitia-james-indictments-dismissed
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/15/politics/michelle-obama-ufc-white-house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey